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The Leading Ladies of Chicago Law Firms: Lisa Scruggs, Duane Morris

By Kerrie Kennedy
May 9, 2016
Chicago Lawyer

The Leading Ladies of Chicago Law Firms: Lisa Scruggs, Duane Morris

By Kerrie Kennedy
May 9, 2016
Chicago Lawyer

Read below

Photo of attorney Lisa ScruggsThe first person in her immediate family to finish college, law has been Lisa Scruggs' raison d’être for as long as she can remember.

“I was one of those talkative, argumentative kids, and adults would always tell me ‘you should become a lawyer,’” she says. “As a young student, learning about the civil rights movement and how lawyers were at the forefront of efforts to affect social change had a big influence on me. I left high school with the intention of going to college and then law school.”

[. . .]

While Scruggs did come back to Jenner to practice commercial litigation, she continued to do education work on the pro bono side, eventually launching an education practice within the firm.

 “That’s what got me to where I am now at Duane Morris,” she says. “I have developed what I believe is the only, truly national school-reform law practice on the pre-K-to-12 side, serving innovators in education and education reform. It took a lot for me to leave my buddies at Jenner, but I am extremely excited about the work I’m doing now.”

 That work includes a groundbreaking case as the lead lawyer on behalf of a group of plaintiffs — The Chicago Urban League, Tri-County Urban League and Quad County Urban League among them — suing the state of Illinois and the State Board of Education, challenging the school funding system.

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